“You go through stages in your career that you feel very good about yourself. Then you feel awful, like, ‘Why didn’t I choose something else?’ But overall, I’m pretty satisfied that I made the right choice when I decided to be an actor.”
For a long while I’ve considered Gene Hackman to be the greatest performer to ever hit the silver screen. Sure, I love others and there are certainly others deserving of the title, but if push came to shove, Hackman would be the call I make. For Gene Hackman himself, the greatest was Errol Flynn, and it’s all too easy to see how Hackman could idolise the swashbuckling personification of adventure during his troubled youth and into the artificial glamour world of Hollywood.
It would be easy to pin down Gene Hackman in one kind of role. His gravelly voice, working-class appearance, and astounding performance as Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in The French Connection early in his career, may lead someone to believe him a one trick pony. This was far from the case. Each Gene Hackman role is totally unique, not only in his own repertoire, but to his contemporaries too.
“All right, Popeye’s here! Get your hands on your heads, get off the bar, and get on the wall!” – Popeye Doyle, The French Connection (1971)
Hackman’s first big break into both critical and commercial success came in 1967 with his performances as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. For this he was nominated for his first Academy Award, although he didn’t become a household name until 1971 playing the gruff cop Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. Despite Doyle’s rough manner, Hackman’s characters could also be gentle – although, it must be said, even in these performances there was a certain intensity bubbling just under the surface, like a pot fit to boil over.
“I was going to make Espresso.” – Blind Man, Young Frankenstein (1974)
Gene Hackman also had perfect comedic chops. His improvised line in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (as related above) is the funniest part of his brief scene. The legend has it that the first take he said the line in was unusable due to the fits of laughter off-screen from Brooks, Wilder and the crew. Above all though, he was a working actor who never tried to make a movie his own. He read the lines, read them perfectly and questioned the lines he felt were uncharacteristic. He could play inspiring, wise, introspective, and bombastic.
“My old man was just so full of hate that he didn’t know that bein’ poor was what was killing him.” – Anderson, Mississippi Burning (1988)
And he could play a banal evil like nobody’s business (Little Bill in Unforgiven remains one of the great cinematic villains over thirty years later). But he could also have fun with a villain. His take on Lex Luthor in 1978’s Superman and as Herod in The Quick and the Dead are prime examples..
“Like I always say – put a fox in the henhouse and you’ll have chicken for dinner every time.” – John Herod, The Quick and the Dead (1995)
The list of great directors Gene Hackman worked with is long but some of those worth noting are, William Friedkin, Richard Donner, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Tony Scott, Sam Raimi and Wes Anderson. And the list of great actors he worked with is even longer. Robin Williams, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand, Brad Dourif, Russel Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Denzel Washington, John Cazale, Terri Garr, Harrison Ford, and Roy Scheider. It’s impossible to name them all.
“Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin’ the cemetery?” – Royal Tenenbaum, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
He wasn’t afraid to take risks, even at the end of his career. He worked with independent filmmakers all of his life and adapted to their quirks seamlessly. To this day he’s one of the actors who understood Wes Anderson’s style the best.
“I don’t want you as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton. I want you as quiet as an ant not even thinking about pissing on cotton.” Joe Moore, Heist (2001)
Above all, Gene Hackman was an actor’s actor. Someone the young trying to break into Hollywood could look to as an idol. An Errol Flynn for the generation who fancied Popeye Doyle over Robin Hood.
Gene Hackman was retired for over twenty years when he passed away in February, but it was no less of a shock. It’s strange to think there will never be another Gene Hackman performance, no new burst of anger from behind a placid face, no breakdown, no perfectly timed improvisation, or moment of rousing inspiration. Gene Hackman was about the craft and he played every role, no matter how ridiculous or serious, perfectly.
I always find it hard to distill the life of a person into mere words. As a writer, it’s one thing I should at least be decent at. I guess I still need practice. But it’s suitable – I think – to end this retrospective as I started it, with words from the man himself. When asked to summarise his life with a single phrase, Gene Hackman responded, ‘He tried.’
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